Well I once spent a whole afternoon walking up and down a slabbed garden path avoiding treading on the cracks in an attempt to reach a trance state, and at the end of that time I had a 'vision' of the sky bursting into flames like the map does at the start of the old TV programme "Bonanza", and that became the inspiration for a story called "Dissonance".

And while watching Patti Smith perform on an end of year edition of "The Old Grey Whistle Test" the image came to me of a humanoid snake having sex with a human male that became the pivotal scene in a novella called "Confession of a Hollow Man". That one makes little sense. I love Patti Smith

My story, "The Onion Code", in the recent "Where The Heart Is" anthology from Gray Friar Press, was not inspired - as some have suggested - by Dan Brown's similarly titled tome, but by one checkout girl in Iceland shouting across to another, "have you got the onion code?", when I was purchasing said vegetable. I was completely unaware of the Brown book at the time, but just liked the title

I misheard a friend of mine and it inspired a story. I've no idea what she actually said, but it was nothing like Dracula's New Dress, which is what I heard. That story has now been accepted for an anthology.

Now I partially block my ears with cotton wool in order to hear more ideas...

I've only once ever had a dream that made it into a novel. In fact, it made the novel. Gather round everyone, gather round...

Once upon a time I woke up one morning at 4am, having had the most vivid dream possible about a sunken house. As I lay there, waiting for the dream to vanish like they always do, it just got more vivid, and I started "putting the scenario together" for a story. After 5 minutes I had the entire structure of a book in my head, and I thought to myself, I've really got to get up and write all this down. I did this, then expanded it that same morning after breakfast.

It became a short YA novel. Haven't had it published yet, but if I do I'll let you know.

Yeah, dreams are good that way. I've had a similar experience and that, too, became the foundation for a novel. I wasn't in the dream, which has only happened a couple of times for me. A big chunk of the novel's done (100,000) but I keep getting sidetracked by short stories...

I've had a couple of odd moments from dreams turning up in books- an ice covered Trafalgar Square informed a great deal of the book I wrote for last year's NaNoWriMo, and a dream about enormous, looming churches was turned into a rather long (and weird) sequence in the first book I wrote. It does tend to be images that turn up more often than actual ideas, though.

Otherwise I find it very difficult to say just where they come from. I've written at least two short stories from random items picked out of Brewer's Phrase and Fable though- that book is a goldmine!

I often have dreams that are very strong on atmosphere - a mood, a state of mind, connected with an image or real or imaginary place - but there isn't a specific situation or narrative logic to make them tick as a story. However, I do sometimes find I have my best ideas just as I'm waking in the morning. Breakthroughs in 'blocked' stories often seem to happen at those times.

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